Lenovo ThinkStation P360 Ultra review: Big power, small package – XDA Developers

The Lenovo ThinkStation P360 Ultra is a new and unique form factor for Lenovo, being a workstation that’s about half the size of the typical small form factor (SFF) machine. It’s closer to something like HP’s Z2 Mini, but it can actually go a bit further in terms of performance. Despite its compact size, it’s packing up to 125W processors and powerful Nvidia graphics, and it’s designed to be easy to get inside it, so you can always upgrade things like the memory, storage, or CPU.

I’m the fan of this device. The compact size makes it really easy to fit into a limited workspace like mine, but it still packs quite a lot of power and a solid supply of ports. If you need a machine for heavier workloads such as video or 3D rendering without having it take up a lot of space on your desk, this is a good option, plus it’s priced very competitively.

Navigate this evaluation:

Lenovo ThinkStation P360 Ultra: Pricing and availability

• The Lenovo ThinkStation P360 Ultra is available directly from Lenovo starting at $1, 299 MSRP

Lenovo launched the ThinkStation P360 Ultra in June, and it came in a starting price associated with $1, 299, which is very reasonable for this kind of machine. My configuration is significantly more advanced than the base model, and it’s costed at $2, 833. 95 at B& H Photo . Lenovo is almost always running some kind of sale on the website, though so you’re likely to find it for less than that. This specific configuration isn’t yet available on Lenovo’s website, but you can get a very similar configuration with double the particular RAM with regard to a lower price than what’s available at B& H Picture.

As per usual along with most workstations, you can buy this from Lenovo’s own web site and other resellers that specialize in business-to-business sales.

Lenovo ThinkStation P360 Ultra: Specs

Design: It’s perfect for small desks

• The Lenovo ThinkStation P360 Ultra comes in a small four-liter chassis that fits in almost any desk
• It has a pretty good selection of ports for something this size

Lenovo really touts the tiny design of this workstation as one of its biggest selling points, and frankly, it’s justified. At under four liters in volume, this is a really small machine, and even though I have a fairly small desk, it fits very well next to my two monitors. The company touts this as an industry-first form factor, but it’s not too far off from something like the HP Z2 Mini workstation within terms associated with size. Still, that doesn’t detract from this being a very compact machine.

Part of the reason for that is that the power supply will be external, plus it’s definitely on the larger side. It’s a 300W unit, so that’s to be expected. In addition to making the PC smaller, this particular also helps with cooling since it removes another source associated with heat through the framework.

This is usually an all-black machine with just one or two red accents, which are very familiar if you’ve used any other Think device. On the ThinkPad , I generally find these accents a bit outdated, but they’re very minor here, and they fit well. The chassis also has rubber feet on 2 sides so you can use the PERSONAL COMPUTER vertically or horizontally without having the case scratch against the floor or even wherever you keep it.

As for the ports, it is got a pretty nice setup, too. On the front, there are two Thunderbolt 4 slots, along with one USB Type-A port and a 3. 5mm combo headphone jack. Thunderbolt support might come in handy if you want to plug in an external GPU later down the line or you opted for the lower-tier model, and it may also be used for docking stations , or any accessories that use USB-C.

Most of the ports are on the back, and it’s a pretty expansive setup with regard to this machine. You get two Ethernet ports (one with 2. 5Gbps speeds, one with 1Gbps), 4 USB Type-A ports (all USB 3. 2 Gen 2), the Wi-Fi antenna port (though Wi-Fi works without it), and three DisplayPort 1. 2 ports to connect to a display. There are also four extra Small DisplayPort 1 . 4a connectors on the particular GPU, which is usually what you’ll want in order to use. The GPU ports will depend on your configuration – the Nvidia T400 only has 3 of them.

The particular back also has a latch that enables you to remove virtually all the internals from the framework without any tools. All of the particular components slide right out, and from there, you can tear away at the PC to install upgrades. You’ll notice that memory slots are pretty easily accessible, but most other components do require some tools. Still, everything is technically removable and replaceable, including the GPU and CPU.

One thing I find interesting about this machine is that actually has a built-in speaker. It’s just one, and obviously not meant in order to be a fantastic audio experience, but it’s there in case you’re setting this particular PC up with a monitor that doesn’t have speakers. I actually ended up preferring this specific to the speakers built into my cheap monitor, but that says more about the particular monitor than the computer.

I should also mention that Lenovo shipped this kind of machine to me with the fairly basic USB mouse and keyboard. These get the job done, and the keyboard is actually pretty comfortable to type on. They have a full-size design and all the keys you’d expect without any unnecessary extras.

The mouse is also very basic, with left, right, and middle buttons. Some extra side buttons would be welcome, but you can’t ask for much more along with bundled accessories.

Performance

• Our review unit comes with an Intel Core i9-12900 plus an -nvidia GeForce RTX A2000 GRAPHICS, but you can go higher
• It supports up to 128GB of memory and has two M. 2 SSD slots

Officially, the Lenovo ThinkStation P360 Ultra comes with up to be able to an Intel Core i9-12900K, which is a very power-hungry 125W CPU with regard to a machine of that size. Our configuration will be a bit more tame, sticking with a new 65W Core i9-12900, along with an Nvidia RTX A2000 desktop GPU together with 70W associated with total power. If you want more power, the top tier configuration is a Nvidia RTX A5000 Laptop GPU, which has 115W of total power. Indeed, the power limitations on this machine are similar to what you might find on some sort of powerful laptop , rather than a good desktop.

Even with the following combination, though, this is usually a powerful machine. Even though the GPU isn’t meant regarding gaming, We found it pretty suitable in the (admittedly limited) testing. My monitor is definitely Full HD, so I actually tried to play some Gears 5 at Ultra settings and got a fairly consistent 60 frames per second, as well as the same goes for games like  Doom Eternal  and  Halo Infinite , all running at their highest presets. I also tried  Forza Horizon 5 , which has an Extreme preset that’s a little bit more demanding. The framerate in this setting was generally around 40fps within busier scenes, though this could get closer for you to 50fps. When I turned the graphics settings down to Ultra, I could get your consistent 60 frames per second.

Of course , some more likely workload for this machine is certainly video rendering, so My partner and i attempted to export an 8K video using DaVinci Resolve. The video itself is 4 minutes in addition to 2 seconds long, and even the complete render time was 6 minutes together with 46 mere seconds. That’s pretty fast with this kind regarding workload, although it’s hard not to look over in Apple’s Mac Studio here. In our review of typically the Mac Studio , this particular same workload was done in just one minute and additionally 22 seconds using DaVinci Resolve. Naturally , that has been on a machine that costs nearly $4, 000, yet you also have to consider how much smaller that will PC is normally. Intel-based devices just can not match the balance of energy, performance, not to mention thermals of which Apple has with its custom silicon. That’s not really Lenovo’s fault, but it is something to help consider.

Naturally, we have to look at benchmarks, too. I ran the usual set of benchmarks on the ThinkStation P360 Ultra, and it may be about what you’d expect intended for this hardware.

As a person can see, CPU performance is right upon par having bigger equipment that have this same processor chip, like often the Intel NUC 12 Intense. Of course , it’s still far behind your Mac Studio room with the M1 Ultra chip, but that is no surprise from this point. Apple really changed the exact landscape to get tiny, powerful machines. As for GRAPHICS performance, you can also tell it is very nowhere near the same level as top-tier PCs. In fact , even a fabulous GeForce RTX 2080 Ti still manages much better performance compared to RTX A2000. This GPU offers a much lower strength budget than those cards, though, so that’s absolutely to end up being expected, as well. Keep in mind, this specific whole system only provides a 300W power supply.

The configuration involving the Lenovo ThinkStation P360 Ultra also came by using 32GB connected with RAM, and also unfortunately, is considered on a single stick. The PC does support dual-channel memory, but My spouse and i can’t benefit from that in this kind of configuration. Testing the memory space with MaxxMem2, it seems like speeds are about what you might expect pertaining to DDR5 RAM at 4800MHz, except meant for the write score, which was oddly low.

Meanwhile, the PCIe 4. 0 SSD included in the package performs very well for the most part, even though it isn’t really the fastest Pci-e 4. 0 around.

Particularly, some of the random read/write results seem noticeably lower than some other PCs through PCIe four. 0 SSDs, which is a bit strange. I just also had somewhat inconsistent results designed for random reads and writes.

Who should buy the Lenovo ThinkStation P360 Ultra?

The Lenovo ThinkStation P360 Ultra is obviously not a machine meant for everyone, but it does a good work of delivering what it promises. It offers quite a little of overall performance, and the smaller size doesn’t come with a lot of sacrifices, at least on the particular CPU side. It’s an important great compact workstation the fact that delivers strong performance for all kinds with tasks, even if the idea can’t very match the ability of bigger and a lot more power-hungry models.

You should buy typically the Lenovo ThinkStation P360 Super if:

• You want a compact machine that can handle demanding workloads
• You care about being able to upgrade as well as repair this PC easily

You shouldn’t buy often the Lenovo ThinkStation P360 Extremely if you:

• Are looking just for the most effective workstation
• Want an extra-small device for the purpose of more fundamental tasks
• The particular Mac Facilities fits your budget and work loads

A big hurdle if you need to buy that machine is going to be pricing, nevertheless that’s true of most workstations. This particular isn’t a cheap computer, but the performance and upgradeability you get are great, especially considering their size.